Good morning. PMQs is back, and there are at least two obvious issues for Kemi Badenoch to raise when she faces Keir Starmer.What Tories calls Starmer’s “Soviet-style” plan to curb supermarket pricesAs Sarah Butler, Mark Sweney and Heather Stewart report, UK supermarkets have been asked by the government to consider freezing the prices of some essential foodstuffs to protect the public from inflation fuelled by the Middle East conflict.This is not the same as the SNP’s proposal for mandatory price caps on essential food items in supermarkets. The UK government is looking at some sort of voluntary scheme.On the Today programme, Dan Tomlinson, a Treasury minister, did not deny the story, but he stressed that this was “not a government announcement”, just a story about what ministers might be looking at. He said it was right for ministers to consider ideas that could help people with the cost of living.This is unlikely to impress Badenoch. This is what her shadow business secretary, Andrew Griffith, said about the story last night.
double quotation markThis is more nuts than a squirrel convention!
I warned Rachel Reeves prices would go up if she raised taxes and drowned employers in red tape. She didn’t listen and now she’s proposing Soviet style measures!
